We (thinkPARALLAX) recently presented on “The Role of Storytelling in Corporate Reporting” — a subject that many organizations struggle to address properly. Our view on the subject is straightforward: A report is not for storytelling. 

Very few stakeholders spend time reading dense, formal corporate reports, and those that do want two things:

• An explanation of how sustainability and/or CSR create long-term value for an organization and its many stakeholders
• Data (evidence) to supports these claims

The audiences who read formal sustainability and/or CSR reports are not concerned with the touching, human-interest stories that resonate with audiences on websites, social media and elsewhere.

That doesn’t mean that reading these reports can’t be an engaging experience. It just means that the majority of report readers are interested in engaging with a different type of content.

Here are a few tactics to make reports interesting for the people who actually read them — it includes tips, insights, and examples of how to meet the needs of a few specific stakeholder groups):

Read the full article by Jeff Sutton (Vice President of Client Strategy at thinkPARALLAX)